


Crossroads

by springgreen



Category: Samurai Champloo
Genre: Chromatic Character, Chromatic Source, Food, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-02
Updated: 2006-05-02
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:26:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/springgreen/pseuds/springgreen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers for end of the series.</p><p>In which there are pink mochi, crossroads, and hugs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crossroads

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Rilina for the beta!
> 
> This was remixed for Remix Redux V! Read [Moshi Moshi Mochi ("In the Pink" Blues Remix)](http://community.livejournal.com/remix_redux/71875.html) by qwerty!

When they all parted ways at the crossroad, Fuu believed for a good hour that eventually Mugen and Jin would go after her, if only to yell at her for tricking them. Something. Anything, really.

But they didn't. It took her over an hour to realize that she was going to make her journey alone. Eventually, she was grateful for that hour; it meant they couldn't make fun of how much she looked like Momo when she knelt by the side of the road to sob.

After her cry, she stood up, wiped her nose on her sleeve, and said, "Ne, Momo, we can do just fine without them! And this way, no one will steal my food." The thought of more food for her helped.

She resolutely nodded her head and marched on. She tried very hard not to think about how strange her footsteps sounded without the accompaniment of Jin's light step and Mugen's clunks.

The next town had a cute little mochi stand. Fuu didn't have much money, so she stood there, drooling. Luckily, the lady who ran the place was very nice. She offered Fuu a job after Fuu told her that she was quite an expert at mochi. She didn't really mention that she was only an expert at eating them, but she figured she was a fast learner. And by the time she had gotten down to reason #192, the lady looked very eager to hire her on.

She just sold mochi at first. The people in the town were very nice as well, and the mochi stand did pretty well. Fuu made sure to smile at everyone as she gave them their mochi, and she didn't even yell too much at the ugly guys who hit on her.

After a while, Fumiko-san even let her make mochi. Making mochi was almost as fun as eating mochi, though the first few times, she pounded the rice too hard and had to pick splinters out of the roof of her mouth.

That part wasn't as fun.

Mochi-pounding time was her "think of ways to piss off Jin and Mugen by showing them how great she was doing without them" time. Because hadn't they all said they'd meet again? And when they did, Fuu was going to make them sorry for just walking off and not looking back.

The mochi she made during "piss off Jin and Mugen" time were always the tastiest, probably because she pounded the rice so thoroughly.

Unfortunately, right after those times were the times she'd remember that one hug from Jin or Mugen's expression as he cut her loose. And then she'd remember how scared she had been when they had argued and gone off separately, how hurt she had been when Jin had left with Sara, how sad she had been when she had sailed off to the island without them.

All those other times, they had found her again. They had even come back from near death! And they couldn't ask around and make a lousy journey and find her and say hello?

The mochi she made during these times were oddly lumpy and strangely shaped.

One day, Fumiko-san said she was going to leave the store to Fuu. Fuu was so excited that she hugged Fumiko-san and Fumiko-san's husband and all the customers that day and gave everyone free mochi. She regretted the free mochi a bit after she tallied up the money.

While she liked Fumiko-san and Fumiko-san's husband and all her customers, she wished that she had someone else to celebrate with.

She petted Momo. At least Momo always stuck with her.

Momo ran off the next day.

Fuu kicked the wall, yelled at it, stubbed her toe, and somehow ended up with pink mochi, along with a purple toenail.

She glared at the purple toenail and blamed it for all her troubles, but the pink mochi were actually rather tasty. And they sold well.

Soon, people started asking her for more pink mochi. She wasn't sure how to make them at first, so she had quite a few purple toenails by the time she was done experimenting. In the end, she had beaten the pink mochi into submission, and so many people were buying her mochi that she actually had to hire help.

She hired nice young men for deliveries and nice young girls for the stand, and she told herself that this was much better than working with Mugen and Jin. Jin would have cooperated, but he would have messed up so badly that everything he touched would have to be redone. And Mugen would have just destroyed half her store or eaten all her mochi.

So she made mochi and talked to her customers and her workers, and life was good, even if it was a bit lonely at times.

Momo came back after a few months, and Fuu pretended to be mad at him. She wouldn't let him touch the pink mochi for several days, but eventually, he overpowered her with cuteness.

Two days later, Fuu heard the distinctive sound of metal-soled geta. She told herself not to get her hopes up, but she kept looking up anyway. Mugen's bushy hair was nowhere to be seen, and Fuu ruined two batches of mochi. She told herself that she was angry at herself and not at all disappointed.

She was sitting in the kitchen, throwing her shoe against the wall to make herself feel better, when a very familiar geta stepped right on her bare foot.

"Owwwwwww!" she screamed as she tried to stand up and kick the geta at the same time.

She bruised her toe and then fell down.

"M-M-Mugen?!"

"Oi," he said.

"Ow! That hurt!"

Then she couldn't think of anything to say, so she threw her other shoe at him.

"Ow!" he said. Fuu found this very satisfactory.

"What are you doing here? Where were you? Why did you step on my foot?" she asked.

"Bzuh?" said Mugen.

Fuu crossed her arms and glared at him, hopefully in a manner that threatened impending doom.

Mugen stared back at her.

She glared a little more.

Mugen shrugged. "Are you the one who makes the pink mochi?" he asked.

He sounded exactly the same. He looked exactly the same. He even (Fuu wrinkled her nose) smelled exactly the same. And he hadn't even come to see her, just her mochi!

"You can't have any!" said Fuu, and she marched off. She just barely avoided walking into a wall. She needed to work on her dramatic exits, but then, there hadn't been a need for them without Mugen and Jin.

She then ran back to her room and hugged her knees to her chest, completely confused. To make herself feel better, she ate a boxful of mochi. After a while, Mugen plopped down beside her and snatched the last white-bean-paste mochi from her hands. She elbowed him to show that she wasn't going to give up her mochi without a fight, but decided against getting up.

She was still trying to figure out what to do now that Mugen was here when she heard someone ordering a box of mochi in monotone.

"Jin?" She peeked through to the front of the shop.

His hair was longer, and he wasn't wearing glasses anymore, but it was still Jin.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

Jin held up his box of mochi. "Buying mochi."

Fuu was extremely confused. She wasn't sure if she should be glad that Jin and Mugen were here. Part of her wanted to bash their heads together, part of her wanted to hug them both, and part of her wanted to make them buy even more of her mochi. She had her livelihood to think of.

So she said "Oh" and decided to do her normal, everyday things that involved rice-pounding and mochi-making and shop-keeping and didn't involve conflicted feelings having to do with two rather odd and incomprehensible ex-bodyguards.

Jin and Mugen both sat in front of the store and munched on their mochi instead of leaving.

She was still confused. If she really did some soul-searching, she would say she was hopeful and frightened and wary and happy and a whole mix of things that was difficult to sort out, but she didn't want to admit to any of that, particularly the hopeful. So she decided to remain confused.

Confusion was much easier than pinning your hopes up like butterflies and watching them slowly die.

When she closed shop, Mugen asked her where the brothels were, and Jin asked where he could look for work. She directed Mugen to a place infamous for its ugly women and sent Jin to a competitor's shop. She also told them to stop hanging out in front of her store; sales that day had dropped alarmingly. In their defense, no one had groped her either.

The next morning, Mugen was back. By the noises he was making, he was nursing a hangover, but since he bought more mochi, Fuu assumed he hadn't tried to sleep with any of the women and hadn't subsequently been robbed, pursued, beaten up, drugged, nearly assassinated or kicked in the crotch. Maybe Mugen had changed. Or maybe the women really were that ugly.

After she yelled at him a few times to sit in the back and stop scaring people away, he ended up in the kitchen.

Jin showed up a few hours later, at approximately the same time the bakery down the street burst into flame. Fuu decided not to say anything about the scorch marks on Jin's gi or the splinters in his hands, though she was incredibly curious as to how Jin managed to get splinters while baking.

She told him to go to the kitchen and not touch anything when the bakery's rather irate owner started pacing the streets.

Jin ended up helping her get a few things down from the shelves, and Mugen rudely shoved her aside while she was pounding rice, saying, "Wimp! Watch how a real man does it!"

He proceeded to break a few things, but the resulting mochi were so soft and chewy that Fuu didn't complain too much.

And so, they settled into something that resembled a routine. Fuu ran the shop, Mugen pounded rice, and Jin made steadily-less-misshapen mochi. At least, those were their official duties. Unofficially, Fuu yelled at Mugen for getting into fights with everyone and throwing rice at them. She yelled at Jin to smile the few times he had to run the shop. She was so busy yelling and complaining that she forgot to be confused; they were Jin and Mugen and Fuu, and they had always been like this.

After a few weeks, Fuu finally thought to ask: "Where are you guys staying?"

Jin and Mugen looked at each other.

"At the brothel," said Mugen.

"The women give excellent massages," added Jin.

Fuu gaped at them. "But you're sort of working here now! People can't associate my shop with the red-light district."

She thought for a bit. "I know! You can stay with me and Momo-san!"

"Wouldn't that be even more scandalous?" asked Jin, even though he didn't really seem to care.

"Oh yeah." Fuu looked glumly at her toes.

Oh yeah, she thought. She still didn't know what they were doing here or how long they were staying.

They all stood there for a few seconds. Fuu watched Mugen scratch himself.

"So, how did you guys find me anyway?"

Mugen gave his back one last good scratch, then dug out a crumpled ball of paper.

Fuu very carefully uncrumpled it to find an old ad for her shop. "Fuu's delicious pink mochi!" it proclaimed. To her surprise, someone had circled "Fuu" instead of "delicious pink mochi" and scrawled a giant question mark next to it.

To her even greater surprise, Jin managed to produce an entire stack of papers, all carefully arranged and annotated. Jin's very neat handwriting had small notes like "Doesn't sound like Fuu" or "Could be her—investigate." The last one was a small piece on her pink mochi, with the note "Must be Fuu" in the margins.

Mugen knocked Jin's papers to the side. "Hey! I looked too! I just didn't have time to write it all down. But I could if I wanted to."

"Ah," said Jin. "So you were already on your way when I found you?"

"That's right!"

Fuu promptly hugged both of them, even though she couldn't quite get her arms around both of them and their swords, and that shut them up. Jin awkwardly patted her on the back, like he had that other night, and Mugen just sort of mussed her hair. But she kept hugging them till she got real hugs right back, and finally, with some of Jin's hair in her mouth, with Mugen's bony arm around her shoulder, with the smell of Jin's clean cotton gi and Mugen's not-quite-washed self, finally, she was home in a way she hadn't been since her mother died.

"Are you staying, then?" Fuu asked as she stepped back.

"Hmmm," said Jin.

Mugen shrugged. "Not if I have to keep living in the stinking brothel."

"But where else? People will talk if you stay at my place!"

They all fell silent. Fuu didn't panic.

"We should bet on it!" said Mugen. "I'm sick of the brothel. I can't even have sex because they're so ugly."

"You can't have sex with me just because you're staying at my place!"

Mugen shot her a look. "Your chest is too flat anyway. But I want a warm bed with no fleas. Here."

He procured a coin. "Heads, we find somewhere else to stay. Tails, we get to move into your place."

Fuu looked at Jin. Jin looked at her. Fuu assumed that meant he was ok with the plan.

"Okay."

Mugen tossed the coin in the air, and they all watched as it somersaulted through the air. It landed with a small thunk.

Fuu leaned over, eager to see the result. Unfortunately, so did Jin and Mugen, all three heads meeting with a resounding crack. Fuu's eyes were watering from the pain, though if forced, she would admit that some of it was because the coin had landed heads up.

Jin picked up the coin. "Tails. I suppose it's settled then."

"Whoo!" Mugen yelped. "Clean beds! Hot baths!"

Fuu nearly protested over being lied to or being shoehorned into sharing her home with two men who would undoubtedly eat all her food and burn the place down, but she shut her mouth and followed them instead.

When they reached a crossroad, Fuu went straight ahead, and they both went with her.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Moshi Moshi Mochi ("In the Pink" Blues Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/170050) by [qwerty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwerty/pseuds/qwerty)




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